Sermon Tone Analysis

This past Christmas season my family and I were able to just stay at home and recuperate.

We all had respiratory infections so we did not want to get away from our home and spread the infections.

It gave me some time to do a little casual reading not related to any task I’m doing for the church.

It was refreshing.

One of the items that I was able to read was a Newsweek article entitled “The Bible: So Misunderstood It's a Sin” which was this fairly long critique of how Christians mishandle the Bible, but more so how the Bible is full of errors.

It was atypical for such a writing.

The author made many valid observations but at the same time it was obvious that he had a liberal bias and his greater objective was to undermine conservative values while promoting mainstream liberal agendas such as the promotion of homosexuality and evolution.

Doing so, the author attacked the Bible by pointing out flaws in the Bible that have been presented by liberal theologians and then drawing conclusions that these flaws reinforce the notion that the Bible is full of flaws.

None of the arguments that the author presented are new and posed no threat to the Christian faith.

Yet what I found of more significance was the comment section of the article on the Newsweek website.

One assessment that the writer harped on was the ignorance of what the Bible actually says by many Christians.

His point was only partially correct in that he linked knowledge with liberal theology.

It is incorrect to believe that a Christian is ignorant if they have little or no understanding of the liberal points of view.

Yet the part of the critic that was correct is that many Christians do not have a basic understanding of the actual contents of the Bible; many Christians have not read their Bibles!

Sadly, this fact was highlighted in the comment section as many professing Christians were attempting to defend scriptures by putting forth misinformation and unsound arguments.

Yet what was of greater insight was the attack by all who were not professing Christians.

Their attack was intense!

They too had many commenters who are ignorant of the facts, both of the Bible and of other subjects, such as politics and science - particularly evolution.

Many, many comments were accusing Christians of hypocrisy yet were laden with inconsistencies themselves, especially regarding the Bible.

The focal point of attack was the Bible itself.

The Bible was attacked by political liberals, homosexuals, Muslims, and liberal religionist.

The intensity of attack was at times very severe and venomous, all intending to destroy the Bible and the faith of those who believe.

There was literally thousands of attacks on the Bible.

The only thing worse would have been if all that hatred was pointed at Jesus Christ Himself; and if Jesus would have been the primary subject of the article that would have been the case.

All of this reminded me of a time prior to when I became a child of God when I was with a small group of friends and someone mentioned the name “Jesus.”

One guy went on a hate filled rant focused on attacking Jesus.

It alarmed the rest of us in the discussion.

This hatred of the Bible, and Jesus Christ Himself, is a reality, and it is a reality that we must expect to confront us as well.

This morning we begin a new sermon series where we will be studying the Gospel of John over the course of the next year.

I’m excited about the sermon series and so I won’t spend much time this morning on background information as I want to jump right in, but I do want to highlight one fact that we need to know before we begin the study.

At the end of the book John the Apostle states "...these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name."

(John 20:31) The Gospel of John is just that, a gospel message.

As a gospel message its intent is to bring people to faith.

The reason I’m excited about studying the book is that this study will help equip all of us at becoming more effective in evangelism.

With that in mind our outline today will center on evangelism.

The outline is as follows:

1) John 1:1-5 - The Message of Evangelism – Jesus Christ

2) John 1:6-13 - The Example of Evangelism

3) John 1:14-18 - The Goal of Evangelism

!! The “Message” of Evangelism – Jesus Christ

Today’s passage, the first eighteen verses of John chapter one, serve as the preface to the gospel.

Here we will be introduce to several recurring topics that are found throughout the writing.

You will notice with just a quick glance that John does not begin with the normal pleasantries that we find in the epistles.

John also does not begin with any type of narrative but jumps straight into a theological argument heavy in metaphors.

So let’s now turn to our text and see if we can’t make sense of what John is communicating here in his opening:

/"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." "He was in the beginning with God." "All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being."

"In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men." "The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."

(John 1:1-5)/

Allow me to define some of these terms as intended, or at least how I believe that they were intended, here in these first five verses, then we will step back and look and the meaning of the thought and how it applies to evangelism.

In verse one, three times John uses the word “Word.”

Many of you already know that the Greek word is lógos (λόγος) and that in the most basic etymological sense lógos will carry the idea of speaking intelligently.

Yet lógos had additional meanings in the minds of both Greeks and Jews.

For the Greek philosopher lógos was imbedded with the concept of there being an impersonal intelligence that gave order to the universe.

This would be similar to how Einstein understood God.

Or, for an alcoholic in recovery, they often use the term “Higher Power.”

For someone like myself, while interacting with proponents of evolution, we will use the phrase “Intelligent Design” which implies that there is an intelligent designer.

If you wade through the comments in the Newsweek article you will discover that I used the term there.

The point is that lógos was an additional way to say God without actually saying the word “God.”

This process to sidestep using the term “God” was also something that the Jews embellished as well.

For the Jew, the word “God” was sacred and they often avoided using the term.

One way they did so was to present God through notions derived from His sayings, usually taken from the Psalms and the wisdom literature (think of wisdom personified) after which they infused that impression of God into the word lógos.

Thus for both the Greek and the Jew the term lógos was coupled with either a concept God Himself or an understanding of an impersonal deity like entity.

The word lógos was infused with life.

The next term that I want to give definition to is “life” as seen in verse four.

Throughout John’s gospel “life” will be a term that means more than just biological vitality.

Life, for John, has an endless quantitative aspect to it.

John’s “life” is life have richer meaning!

If we limit our understanding of life to what we currently know it could hamper our desire to live beyond our projected lifespan.

I recently read in a news article where pollsters asked people if they wanted to live longer than 120 years, and the vast majority said that they would not.

That should come as no surprise to us!

When we think of a lifespan we incorporate the aging process and physical pain, the results of sin and evil such as crime, and the need to deal with calamities over and over again.

How many of us were alarmed when we watched on the news just prior to the New Year celebrations the stories of small kids suffering loss of digits and limbs due to unsafe fireworks?

That would be disheartening to see over and over again as each year cycles by.

Think of seeing that a thousand times, or even a million times.

It would be discouraging to say the least.

But this life is not what John has in mind.

If you look closely at John 1:4 we see that in Christ is life.

Christ is the source of life and the thought is more in line with the belief that life, or our meaning of life, is found in Christ, as we experience Him and His attributes.

God wants His children to experience the richness of who He is, and He is infinite.

God’s love is infinite thus it will take eternity for us to experience His love.

God’s wisdom is infinite and it will therefore take us eternity to experience His wisdom.

God’s knowledge, artistic nature, mercy are all infinite thus it will take us eternity to experience those attributes and qualities of Him.

In Christ we discover the fullness of life in that we discover the fullness of the attributes of God.

God wants to share with us the joy that He experiences, and that joy springs forth from Him, as it is the outcome of the attributes as they are a part of the composite of who He is.

And this leads straight into our last term.

The last term that we want to bring definition to is “Light.”

Again in John 1:4 we see that Jesus is light.

Often in the scriptures light is used metaphorically to speak of the holiness of God and is contrasted with darkness.

This will be partially the case here; but light is also an illuminator, and we need to incorporate that concept at this juncture in the Gospel of John.

To illuminate is to bring into view something that is presently there.

Let’s say you have a red rose in a vase that is inside a darkened room.

Is the rose red even though you cannot see within the room due to a lack of light?

Sure!

Once you introduce the light you now see that the rose is already red.

The light illuminated what was there.

So now let’s step back and see what it is that John is trying to communicate to us in John 1:1-5.

In verse one we see that there is an entity whom John calls “word.”

This entity was, is with, and is – God.

The point that John is making is that this entity is both God as well as separate from God, yet this entity has characteristics that are divine.

Picture if you will complete nothingness; nothing around us such as ourselves, the other people sitting near us, no houses or city, no nation or world, no sun nor moon nor stars, no universe whatsoever.